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Λ ANWAR JALAL SHEMZA (BRITISH 1928-1985), PAINTING 1959

λ ANWAR JALAL SHEMZA (BRITISH 1928-1985)PAINTING 1959Oil on canvasSigned and dated in Urdu (lower left); further signed, inscribed and dated 59 (verso)84 x 64cm (33 x 25 in.)Provenance:Denis BowenAcquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited: New Vision Centre Gallery, A.J.Shemza, 1959London, Commonwealth Institute, Commonwealth Vision, 1961 (illustrated in catalogue)Bristol, Royal Commonwealth Society, Centenary Exhibition, 1968Jarrow, Bede Gallery, New Vision 56-66, 1984, no. 45 Born in Simla, India, in 1928, Anwar Shemza initially studied Philosophy and languages at Punjab University before enrolling at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore. Graduating in 1947 he opened the Shemza Commercial Art Studio there and as an artist, poet and writer he quickly became a central figure in the cultural life of Pakistan. In 1956, he left Lahore to study at the Slade School of Art in London where his work began to fuse the earlier literary and artistic influences from Lahore with imagery and techniques that he discovered in the Museums and Galleries of London, most notably those of Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian . The Art Historian, Professor Iftikhar Dadi, describes Shemza's work from this period as Calligraphic Modernism, observing that among the lessons he learned from Klee was the importance of surface as the plane of modernist experimentation rather than a stress on modelling and the freedom and ability to deploy abstraction, geometry and pattern - much of it derived from Islamic art - towards modernist exploration.(I.Dadi, Calligraphic Abstraction: Anwar Jalal Shemza, London, 2015, p.12)Indeed Shemza's work from the late 1950s and early 1960s uniquely explores and celebrates his past and present artistic experiences while fighting the insular attitudes of the Post War British art establishment. His past successes in Lahore found admirers in the likes of Denis Bowen at the New Vision Centre Gallery and Victor Musgrave at Gallery One, however more mainstream galleries and critics were dismissive and hostile. As the artist and curator of the Hayward Gallery 1989 exhibition, The Other Story, Raheed Araeen observed; Although Anwar Jalal Shemza belongs to that generation of artists who arrived here in the 50s and who had already established themselves in their countries of origin, his experience in Britain led him to an entirely different direction to his contemporaries. But his experience was not unique. Almost every Afro-Asian artist must have his or her own story to tell: how their dreams and aspirations were shattered, how they had to recover their confidence in themselves, their identity as human beings and as artists; and how the memory of their own cultures played an important role in this recovery.(Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story, Exhibition Catalogue, The Hayward Gallery, London, 1989) Shemza's work has been exhibited widely including The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, at the Hayward Gallery, London, 1989; Anwar Shemza, at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1997; Anwar Shemza, at the Tate Britain, 2015; and Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965, at Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2016.Works are also held in the permanent collections of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Tate Gallery, London, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Lahore Museum, Pakistan National Council of the Arts, Islamabad, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.

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λ ANWAR JALAL SHEMZA (BRITISH 1928-1985), PAINTING 1959

Estimate 20 000 - 30 000 GBP
Starting price 18 000 GBP

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For sale on Thursday 11 Jul : 10:30 (BST)
newbury, United Kingdom
Dreweatts
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